Although it has recently been revealed that a team at BioWare's new Montreal outfit have been dispatched to develop the next game in the successful Mass Effect franchise, it seems their plans for the game itself are much less committed so far.

Confirming that they're yet to even lock in a narrative, Mass Effect producer Casey Hudson recently took to Twitter to ask fans whether they'd prefer the new game take place as a sequel to the original trilogy, or a prequel (via Eurogamer):

"Parsing through your thoughts on the next #ME game. Would you be more interested in a game that takes place before the trilogy, or after?", he wrote.

A game set earlier in the series' history may come into conflict with already-established canon. We already know how the human race got to the start of the Mass Effect series (they found a mass relay inside Pluto's moon, fought the turians and got given a nice swanky office on the Citadel).

A game set later in the series' history would have to tackle Mass Effect 3's various ending choices, which leave the galaxy in varying states of repair.

It's not the first time BioWare has asked fans their thoughts on the next Mass Effect game, but word that the developer has yet to choose a time-setting is another sign that development is still in its infancy.

Previous comments out of BioWare Montreal have confirmed that Mass Effect 4 is being built on the Frostbite 2.0 engine technology, and will involve gameplay changes, with some mechanics being adopted and shared with BioWare's Dragon Age development team.

if its to be just another 3rdperson rpg like the current then after yes, however I always thought a spin off in a different genre set in the 2 years of shepards death before me2 takes place would be cool, you still have the collectors in the game as well reapers and geth for an enemy

however I always thought a spin off in a different genre set in the 2 years of shepards death before me2 takes place would be cool

See, thats the sort of thing I hope they don't do, because there really isn't much room to spin a narrative in there since we already know most of what happened over that time, and know where things ended up, so any story they tell is already locked into starting and ending a certain way and hitting already pre-determined story points.

Its kinda like when I played Halo: Reach, I didn't enjoy it as much, cos I already knew the ending, I already knew Reach got f***ed up and everyone died, so you kind of had this feeling through the whole game of "Well, doesn't really matter what I do, we're going to lose anyway".

Personally i'd love to see a sequel set maybe 50-100years after me3 which deals with the yahg rise and what ever was on the other side of the dormant relays. The only 2 major issues i could see with a sequel is if they merged with the machines or not, and the fact earth would be covered with eezo, effectively wiping out the human population.

I would like to see a different take on the events of ME 1-2-3. From a far different point of view. Like you are a human refugee fleeing the Geth, then the collectors. Perhaps you are apart of a small merc band operating out of Omega, taking a job to protect a human colony when the geth attack. Anything is better then what happens after ME3.